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Social Support and Sense of Program Belonging Discriminate Between Youth-Staff Relationship Types in Juvenile Correction Settings

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Abstract

This study explored the association between personal and social characteristics of incarcerated juvenile offenders and youth-staff relationship types. Employing the three relationship categories identified in a typology by Marsh and Evans (2009), multinomial logistic regression indicated that youth reporting higher levels of social support and sense of program belonging were least likely to belong to the relationship category associated with expressed dissatisfaction about problem solving and more negative forecasts. Results highlight the importance of socio-environmental factors in developing and administering productive youth correction programs.

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Notes

  1. Violent crimes include weapon offenses and gang activity. Status offenses include drug and alcohol related charges. Probation violations include any violation of a court order (e.g., escape). Examination of offense type by data collection site revealed no discernable patterns or differences in rates for males or females, suggesting that variations in waiver and transfer protocols at the state level are not resulting in substantively dissimilar youth populations across the participating facilities.

  2. A slight majority (51%) of the 330 males who resided in a program that assigned juvenile care workers to be some version of a primary case manager did not identify that staff member as the one they turn to most for help and advice. Similarly, a slight majority (53%) of the 137 females who resided in a program that assigned some version of a case manager did not identify that staff member as the one they turn to most for help and advice. Most males and females identified a same-sex staff as the one they turn to most for help and advice (i.e., 81% of males selected male staff and 64% of females selected female staff). Most staff (≈40%) nominated by males and females worked various shifts, followed by ≈ 35% working mainly swing-shifts and ≈ 25% working mainly dayshifts.

  3. Although participants responded to statements of attachment for both mother and father figures, substantial missing data for father figures required that only attachment scores for mother figures be included in the analyses.

  4. In contrast with a categorical assessment of attachment style, a composite rating of adolescent perceived quality of attachment was used in the study (e.g., see Buist et al. 2004; Freeman and Brown 2001; Fritsch and Goodrich 1990; Simons et al. 2001).

  5. Reliability analyses suggested that deletion of the fifth item in this measure (“No matter who I’m talking to, I’m always a good listener”) would substantially improve alphas–particularly for females. Subsequently, the alphas and analyses reported used the revised four item measure. Follow up analyses with the full five-item measure revealed no change in the regression model.

  6. Because the social support measure included an item assessing perceived staff support, we were concerned with potential construct overlap with the program belonging measure. Accordingly, we ran the same analyses with a revised social support measure with the staff support item removed. The model remained unchanged except that program belonging also emerged as a significant predictor for Cluster 2 (practical) at p ≤ .05, suggesting that as youth report a higher sense of program belonging, the less likely they are to be in Cluster 2 (practical) than Cluster 1 (balanced). However, in doing so, the already marginal alphas for the social support measure dropped even further (α = .55 for males and α = .67 for females). This decrease, coupled with only a slightly different regression model that ultimately has limited impact on our interpretation and discussion, led to our decision to report the original analysis with the full social support measure.

  7. The same analysis, split by gender, revealed substantially similar results. Differences emerged in that ethnicity was no longer significant and program belonging was the only significant predictor for females.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Nevada, Reno, USA

    Shawn C. Marsh, William P. Evans & Michael J. Williams

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  1. Shawn C. Marsh
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  2. William P. Evans
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  3. Michael J. Williams
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Correspondence to Shawn C. Marsh.

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Marsh, S.C., Evans, W.P. & Williams, M.J. Social Support and Sense of Program Belonging Discriminate Between Youth-Staff Relationship Types in Juvenile Correction Settings. Child Youth Care Forum 39, 481–494 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-010-9120-8

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